August in America, day three

August 6th, 2013

It was a beautiful day today but I spent most of it indoors. Today was the first day of An Event Apart DC here in Alexandria. As usual, the standard of talks was ludicrously high.

An Event Apart often feels like getting a snapshot of the current state of web technologies and best practices. I really like it when themes emerge from multiple talks—those emergent themes are usually the hot topics of modern web design and development. Today I felt like there were two prominent themes:

process and

devices.

Both Samantha and Jason talked about process and workflow from different perspectives. I had seen Jason’s talk at New Adventures in Nottingham but he’s such a joy to listen to, I gladly soaked it up again. Listening to Samantha reinforced my opinion that she’s one of the smartest designers working today. I found myself nodding my head enthusiastically during both talks.

Luke and Grigs both showed us what an amazingly diverse set of devices we have to deal with these days. I know that some people find this situation depressing, but I find it quite energising. Let’s face it, the web was getting pretty boring there for a while a few years back. You certainly can’t say that about the current browser/device landscape.

Rounded out with Jeffrey and Karen’s content-focused calls-to-arms—one at the start of the day and the other at the end—it was a great day one.

This is a brand new untested talk. I had planned to give a run-through to the guys at Clearleft but somehow that never happened, so tomorrow will literally be the very first time I’m giving this talk. That gives it a certain frisson and adds an air of excitement and tension. It also means I’m very, very nervous.

I think it’s a good talk …but I’m not sure how it’s going to go down with this crowd. While it will have some practical tips scattered throughout, it’s mostly going to be a fairly personal talk about a personal project that I’m using as a lens to look at long-term web design and development. That might put some people off, who would rightly argue that it isn’t directly applicable to their day-to-day work, but I’m just going to have to accept that. It’s going to be interesting to see what people make of it.